Even Chile's courageous President Arturo Alessandri, "The Lion of Tarapaca," worried about body lice last week, bathed with unusual frequency and spurred Santiago health officials in their zealous efforts to stamp out a typhus epidemic.
Since lice are well known to transmit typhus, Santiago went in for city-wide delousing. Theatres were disinfected every night. So were dance halls, until Santiago authorities reflected that slow, intimate Chilean tangoes would be just right for spreading typhus. Abruptly all dance halls, billiard parlors and swimming pools in the capital were closed.
Fortunately the Chilean...
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